


What Didn't Happen

by DevBasaa



Series: Moments In and Out of Time [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Captain America: The First Avenger, M/M, Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 14:11:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1553234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevBasaa/pseuds/DevBasaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A follow-up to ‘Dreams From a Mountainside’.  Steve and Bucky attempt to have their promised talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Didn't Happen

**Author's Note:**

> Chronologically, one might place this story farther down the line, but it belongs here. Thanks to this and other additions, the series is now a planned 12 stories.

When Steve walked into the bunker, his entire team sat around a small table, passing Dum Dum’s flask amongst them. Gabriel relayed the story of Dr. Zola’s face when he pointed the gun at him, how he’d looked like he might lose his bowels right then. Bucky told how Steve used misdirection allowing him to shoot a guy right between the eyes. They were all laughing, relieved, tired, happy.

But Steve couldn’t really notice all of them; all he could see was Bucky, the broadness of his smile, the lightness of his eyes and the huge cut on his forehead from when he nearly fell from the train. Steve had barely grabbed him before the iron railing broke off and it meant pulling so hard and fast that Bucky hit his head against the exposed train wall, knocking him out at first.

Which had given Steve a heart-attack to rival seeing Bucky hanging, helpless, over the endless depth of a gorge.

But then he woke, rubbed his bleeding forehead and said, “Did we get ‘em?”

Steve had almost kissed him then. To return the kiss Bucky had given him before they headed on this mission. But then the train stopped, Dr. Zola had been caught and Gabriel needed their back-up.

It’d been hours since then and Steve had been drawn from one debriefing to another and then a call from Colonel Phillips. He’d finished his job; now he had to see his friend.

“Bucky.”

Bucky looked at him and smiled, then raised the flask like a toast and took another hit off of it.

“All right, all right, I only have so much of that until our next rations run.” Dum Dum pulled the flask from Bucky’s hand.

Bucky only chuckled. “Spoil sport. Though I swear that stuff doesn’t touch me like it used to.”

“So you’ve become a drunk like Dum Dum, then?” Jim said. “Way to go, Barnes. See what this war’ll do to ya? What say you, Cap?”

“I say Bucky needs to have that cut looked at.”

Bucky laid his hand over his forehead. “This? It’s stopped bleeding.”

“Only 5 minutes ago,” Gabriel said. “Listen to the Cap, Barnes. Get some stitches.”

Bucky made a face. “Why? So some doctor can make my scar barely noticeable?” Bucky pointed at his forehead. “I earned this. This is a badge of honor.”

Steve cleared his throat. “Well, then let me take a look at it and decide if it really needs attention.” He wondered how obvious he was being, trying to have a moment alone with Bucky. “I’ve got a first aid kit in my bag, which...would be in the room they assigned us.”

At first, Bucky looked like he was about to burst out laughing, then he seemed to school his face and look serious as he nodded. “Yeah, maybe you’re right,” he said, then added as he stood: “Later, men, duty calls.”

Once the door on the other Commandos closed, Bucky snorted a laugh as he walked past Steve. “You still can’t lie.”

Steve spread his hands as he followed after Bucky. “What? I thought that was a pretty decent reason.”

“Oh yeah, sure.” Bucky then pitched his voice a little higher. “C’mon up to my room and let me look at that for you.” He chuckled again, then said in his normal voice. “Like each of those men haven’t used that exact line on a dozen girls.”

“Well I did promise you we’d talk.”

Bucky stopped and turned to look at Steve, smiling. “Yeah, you did.”

Steve felt his chest flutter, which had never happened before when Bucky looked at him. But he didn’t think Bucky had ever looked at him like that before: one brow raised and a quirk to his lips, a promise without words.

Steve suddenly felt as awkward with Bucky as he generally did with dames. How did that happen? 

Bucky had turned and continued down the hallway. His footfalls echoed in the narrow space and Steve swore he walked with a swagger he hadn’t displayed in a while. Steve had planned on saving this conversation for once they’d returned to London with Dr. Zola in tow. He felt, by rights, they should truly complete the mission before tackling an issue rife with complexities. But after watching Bucky dangle from the warped train wall, waiting seemed absurd.

Once inside the room, once the door had closed, Steve said, “You terrified me.”

Bucky turned to face Steve, his smile instantly faded; his entire body sagged. “When I kissed you?”

Steve jerked back a little, surprised. Had he seemed upset during the kiss? “No! Watching you nearly die, Bucky! I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

Bucky’s smile returned. “But you didn’t,” he said, then quirked his lips and shrugged, the way he had for years, the way he always had when they were kids. “I didn’t die.”

Steve had meant it to be a conversation, he really had. They were supposed to sort out their feelings, decide what this all meant, what they should do. But Steve didn’t have the words. He only had his heart. And what he knew was action.

Steve crossed the distance between him and Bucky, grabbed Bucky by his coat—just as Bucky had grabbed him—and pulled him close. Steve’s kiss wasn’t nearly as gentle.

Their mouths came together as naturally as they’d always touched—hugs or slaps or the squeeze of a shoulder. Bucky pressed so close against him rang true and good and Steve felt his heart race as Bucky moaned and fisted the front of his uniform.

He’d never known intimacy like this, to breathe another’s breath, to feel the thrill of his tongue sliding against another’s. That it was Bucky who made him feel these amazing things only heightened it all. 

It had always been Bucky; why hadn’t he seen it before now?

_It had always been Bucky._

~*~

Steve sat up. His iPhone was buzzing, alerting him to something. He picked up the phone and saw a little blue bird notification. A tweet, as Stark had called it. Steve frowned. How did Tony turn those notifications back on? Steve swore Natasha had fixed it so every tweet Tony made didn’t make his phone buzz. Steve really didn’t understand why Tony needed anyone to know that he’d stayed up until 4am tasting old scotch, anyway.

Or maybe Steve just resented being woken.

He shifted to the bedside and planted his feet on the cool floor. He could never decide if he hated this recurring dream or longed for it. The dream of what never was. The dream where Bucky lived and they either kissed or talked or did far more inventive things. The dream varied in that way, but they were always together. They always made it right.

“Dammit.”

Steve shook his head, the dream still so vivid, he swore he could feel Bucky’s breath ghosting across his lips. Sometimes it made his chest hurt, to think of what could have been. It made his eyes sting and his throat so tight, he can’t breathe until he’s in a hot shower and letting the water pound against his back, kidding himself that he’s not crying, that’s just water running over his face.

Other times, he’s so thankful to see Bucky at all, he doesn’t care that it’s a dream of what never happened. He’ll close his eyes and try to replay the dream back in his mind and live with Bucky again, just a moment longer.

That was what he decided to do now. He closed his eyes, a warm summer DC breeze ruffling his hair, and remembered. He remembered laughing with Bucky when they were young, he remembered the look on Bucky’s face when he agreed to join the Howling Commandos, of the faith and pride his saw in his best friend’s smile, and he remembered the emotion in his eyes when they kissed.

Steve sighed. “God Bucky, I loved you. Why couldn’t I have realized that sooner?”

The iPhone buzzed again. Steve looked; Tony had announced that he was rethinking his profession to become a connoisseur of liquors older than his emotional age. Steve couldn’t help but chuckle this time. He’d tell Tony that, but he didn’t have clue-one how to respond to the little blue bird things. A text he’d learned, but this? 

Maybe that young lady security guard at the exhibit might help him out again. She’d done it before.

Today seemed like a good day to visit the Smithsonian again, anyway.

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to make this an AU and put it as an aside to the series, but then I heard the song 'Ghost' by Indigo Girls and, well, first I cried, thinking of Steve thinking about Bucky. Then I realized I'd already written a fic to go with the song. And there we have it. It becomes part of the series, placed slightly out of order on purpose.
> 
> Also, post-Avengers, Pre-CA:TWS


End file.
